Insteon Dimmers come on in the UI at 100%, but device actually 0%

I’m a newb to Home Assistant having been cast aside by Insteon! I’ve got all my non Insteon stuff working a treat through Home Assist and wish I’d done this years ago!
Anyway - here’s the issue and wondered if anyone had seen this before.
I have several Insteon Dimmer switches. I can switch them off via the app, and voice cloud, but if I use voice, or the Home Assist UI to bring them on, they show “on” in the UI but do not light up in reality. That said…if I turn them on via the UI by setting a brightness value, or by using voice command: “Set Dining Room to 75%” everything works perfectly.
Is this a known integration issue? Has anyone come up with a work around to have the UI interpret “Turn On” to equate to “Set to 100%”?
Thanks so much!

Also a brand new HA user. I think I have the same issue as you. I posted on another similar thread but there have been no solutions. I am running HA on a Windows 10 laptop as well as the app my android phone. To the best of my knowledge, both are properly installed.

I have approximately 20 installed devices. 5 of the devices work as expected with HA. For the remaining switches (mostly dimmers 2477D), when turning the switches on by HA (windows virtual or android add on), the slider turns blue, moves to the on position, the icon light bulb turns yellow and the brightness slider shows “100%.” However, the physical wall switch and load do not turn on. However, if I touch anywhere on the HA brightness slider, the actual switch and light turn on instantly. At that point, I can change the brightness and turn the switch off successfully in HA. Once the switch is turned off either by HA or at the wall switch, HA cannot turn it back on unless using the brightness bar again.

To make matters more interesting, if I turn the light on (or off) at the wall switch, HA registers the light on (or off) immediately. If turned on at the wall switch, I can also change brightness or turn it off on HA.

Just to be clear, when I use HA to try turn the switch on, it is registering on the UI as 100% brightness even through the switch and light are not activated. This seems different than your description.

Any help on this issue will be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

We share the EXACT same issue. I’ve not found a solution yet. Nice to know I’m not alone here. Hopefully someone gives us an answer. In the interim I’ve taken to asking Alexa to set light to 100% in order to get them on.
I have 3 Insteon non dimmers that work perfectly, and then about 10 that all exhibit the same behavior as described in this request.

I do have more info now. When I installed my dimmers I set the “on brightness” to one of them at 50%. I never set an on brightness for any of the others. In carefully testing the setup from HA I can confirm that only one of the many dimmers I have works, and it’s the one that had the initial brightness setting set in the Insteon hub.
This tells me that HA is seeing the lack of an initial brightness setting as a brightness of 0% which is why the other dimmers appear to not work correctly.
I’m guessing we’ll have to wait for HA to figure out how to let us edit the “on” brightness for Insteon devices, as well as the “ramp up” and “ramp down” speed settings - both of which are not present in the HA UI.

Same issue here. I posted it as an ‘issue’ for the code at one point about a year ago, but I’m guessing it wasn’t a high priority, or the Insteon line protocol doesn’t accurately tell HA what the device’s actual state is.
In my case, I use the built-in preset brightness level on wall-switch dimmers a lot. But touching the ‘Up’ button tells HA ‘On’ which it interprets as 100% even though the dimmer goes to the pre-set brightness (much less than 100%) as intended.
It’s also probable that teharris, the author/maintainer of the Insteon integration, is pretty busy at the moment getting the Insteon control panel ready for release.
See: HA unaware of manual preset dim/brighten events from Insteon · Issue #44660 · home-assistant/core · GitHub

Same exact problem suddenly started happening on one of my many dimmers yesterday. Have a feeling more and more people are running into this issue, so hopefully a fix is in the works soon.

Looks like the github is closed on this one, marked an edge case. Am I correct that you had preconfigured you’re dimmers with a preset brightness? On the one dimmer I did that with HA is working well. I never did that to my other dimmers (so insteon assumes on = 100%). Do you know if you can set the initial brightness from the paddle itself since the hub interface has been lost to us?

You should be able to use the Insteon Contol Panel to set an initial brightness. I believe it will be in the next HA release.

1 Like

Yes. On the dimmer, I set it to the preferred level, then press the hidden button once.
Now, if it’s off, a single up press causes it to go to the preset level. A double-up press goes to 100%.
But HA will ‘see’ the single-press on event the dimmer sends and assume 100%, rather than asking the dimmer what level it went to.

Not a fix but an interesting find as I continue experimenting with HA. I know others may know of this already but just posting it for other folks new to HA like myself.
You can temporarily control any of the non-responsive lights on a one-time basis. Go to Developer Tools and Services and then scroll to “Light: Turn On”. Next, choose the switch you want to control by using either the “Choose Device” or “Choose Entity” buttons (or even an area). Once the switch is chosen, scroll down and choose either Brightness Value or Brightness by checking the respective box. Once checked, assign a brightness level either by typing in a value or moving the slider. Then, just press the “Call Service” button and the actual switch will turn on! (well at least all 15 of mine respond). To turn the switch off in HA, just uncheck the box and press the Call Service button.
There are other services that also work, but as far as I know they are all just temporary commands. Fortunately, this process demonstrates that HA can control these errant switches and a software fix should eventually resolve the problem.

I would also note the new Insteon control panel allows you to set resume brightness which should take you to the level the light was turned off at. I would get the panel up and look in the ALDB settings for the switch. Perhaps they are set at 0 initial and no resume.

I have same issue on two of my Switchlincs. Just switched over to HA this week. How do I get insteon control panel? Is it an addon for HA?

I have the same issue with Insteon dimmer switches not turning on unless I change the % of brightness.

@maalund
First, …I am new to HA…

This is what I did to install Insteon in HA…
GoTo:
/Configuration
/Devices and Services
/Integrations tab at the top
bottom right click on +Add Integration and Add Insteon (you can type Insteon in search)
The devices and entities should start auto filling.
Hope this helps

Yes. Best to wait for the next update which is expected this week. Or you can follow the directions to install (seach Insteon Control Panel). I personally would wait a few days to see.

My thought is that the devices have on level at 0% and their flag to resume dim on set to false. When you turn them on, they are at 0% brightness.

1 Like

Thanks,
I will wait for next update,
getting use to just adding 100% after I use a voice command.
It’s interesting, I have a couple of dimmers that work correctly, and a couple that don’t.
I am going to see if they have a different firmware or model number.

Martin

Following this thread as I am in the same boat with the 2476D dimmers. I tried changing the on level in the insteon control panel, but if I try and save the settings I get - The device did not respond as expected to the write request - So, I’m hoping there will be a fix to this issue, as I would like to setup automations with these switches.

Got the update and the panel showed up.
One old switchlink had no on level, set it to 255 and it fixed the issue.
The other switchlink I had issues with was set to 255, I changed it to 248 and it worked.
Change back to 255 and it still works.
Thanks for the help. All working great.
Will play around with some other setting like ramp rate and LED dimming later.

Still unable to read from or write to 2467D dimmer switches so I can set the on level to 255. Will this be fixed in a later update?

this has been an issue since the original implementation of Insteon. I just tested the new control panel, setting defaults and the resume brightness, this did not change any of it. My theory is that since the default brightness is set on the local device, Home Assistant can’t see it, and assumes on at the local switch is 100%.

My WorkAround:
I have taken each room that has a Insteon switch link in it, and added a node-red flow, that will watch for the switch to be turned on, It will then call turn on immeadetly again with the brightness set to what the default brightness is set on the local device. This is now much eaiser with the Insteon control panel.

if anyone is interested I can share an example node-red flow, they are pretty straight forward, downside is if you turn the switch on then off immeadetly, It will sometimes come back on with the delay in home assistant.

Long term solution:
I am replacing all Insteon with non-insteon. I have been in the eco system since gen1 of X10, but they have lost their way, and its time for me to move on. z-wave and zigbee are miles ahead of them now, and they work for my automation flows.

I don’t seem to have this issue. Using HA my devices turn on at the on_level set at the device not a default of 100%. You can display and modify the on_level set for the device and in the ALDB using the control panel.